With Manny Pacquiao possibly about to end his career in November, his promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank is determined to try and put together a mega fight with undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr. In an article by the Associated Press, Arum says “That’s the fight people want to see, and that’s the fight I’m going to do my darnedest to make happen. My first goal is to make that fight happen, but we’re not going to negotiate this thing in the press, because if we do, given the egos, it’s never going to happen.” That’s nice to hear. It’s too bad that it took this long for that to happen.
The time to have made the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was in March, not now. If they had stuck it out longer and got a little more movement from Pacquiao on the random blood testing, the fight would have been easily made. Now things aren’t going to be so easy. Mayweather is now the one that is in the position of power with his one-sided 12 round decision over Shane Mosley earlier this month and the previous agreements that were made during the last negations, like purse split, might not hold this time.
It’s hard to imagine Pacquiao agreeing to take less than 50-50. But it’s more difficult to see Mayweather agreeing to fight Pacquiao unless he gets what he wants with the random blood testing. Mayweather might even want more than a 50% cut of the revenue and he would have the better numbers from his last fight against Mosley to justify asking for a bigger cut. This could really get in the way of putting together a fight. Arum isn’t saying whether Pacquiao will give in on the blood testing that he wants.
But hopefully Arum can persuade Pacquiao to at least agree to take the random blood tests up until two weeks before the fight. That would make putting together a fight with Mayweather much more doable. 24 days is a nonstarter. That won’t work this time. Pacquiao is probably going to have to give in on this issue if he wants to get the money fight with Mayweather. It won’t work if he stubbornly sticks to the 24 days, refusing to have the testing within that time frame.
In the past, Arum and Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach said there would be no concessions during negotiations, which was kind of a strange thing to say given that Mayweather is perhaps the most popular fighter in boxing. I could see them saying that if this was one of their typical opponents that have been dug up to fight Pacquiao, but not Mayweather. That seemed very strange and not productive to putting a fight together. In a way, it seemed like they didn’t want the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight to happen.
I could understand why they wouldn’t because Mayweather would have an excellent chance of ending the gravy train by beating Pacquiao. Now, however, with Pacquiao possibly fighting for the last time in November, there is a sense of urgency from Arum that wasn’t present last time. If the fight can be made, it will be a huge payday for all involved, even if Pacquiao gets totally dominated by Mayweather.
